May 14, 2000

Carrying a TorchEverybody knows about the Statue of Liberty, but how many people know its whole life story?

By STEPHANIE DEUTSCH

LIBERTY
Written and illustrated by Lynn Curlee.
41 pp. New York:
Atheneum Books for Young Readers. $18. (Ages 7 to 12)

ere is a picture book for school-age children that communicates significant ideas as well as much fascinating information. From the first suggestion of a monument to American independence at a Parisian dinner party in 1865 to the details of the renovation and gala rededication of the much-loved Statue of Liberty more than a hundred years later, Lynn Curlee's ''Liberty'' emphasizes the relationship between symbol and idea, and the power of both.

Opening with the familiar words of ''The New Colossus,'' a poem donated by the young poet Emma Lazarus to an 1883 fund-raising drive for the statue, Curlee makes clear that the Statue of Liberty is no mere metal matron. To Lazarus, this ''mighty woman with a torch'' was ''Mother of Exiles,'' beaming a ''world-wide welcome'' to the ''homeless, tempest-tost.'' She may be the world's largest metal statue, a reminder of the Colossus of Rhodes's contribution to the wonders of the ancient world and an engineering marvel, but before she was that she was
an idea.

In 1865, the Frenchman edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent law professor and expert on American history, suggested at a dinner at his home near Paris that a monument be built, in America, to the ideals that had inspired the American and French revolutions. In America, Curlee writes, these ideals had led to stable democracy, while in France the revolution had been followed by ''a bloody Reign of Terror, the disastrous wars of Napoleon and decades of bad government.'' Creating a monument to American independence might help the French understand how they had gone wrong. Laboulaye imagined a ''united effort'' that would represent ''the common work of both nations.''

One guest at the dinner, the successful young neoclassical sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, found this idea so compelling that he nurtured it for more than 20 years. Sailing into New York Harbor a few years after the dinner, on his first visit to the United States, Bartholdi felt certain that the perfect spot for the monument he had begun to envisage was ''here where people get their first view of the New World.''

A fine artist with command of narrative text as well, Curlee clearly details the challenges Bartholdi and Laboulaye faced in making their idea a reality. Americans had to be persuaded to accept the gift and to provide the proper location for it; money had to be raised in France to pay for the statue itself, and in America to provide a suitable pedestal to support it. The design had to be conceived, refined and then enlarged by a painstaking process called pointing; and, finally, an internal system had to be designed, which would support the more than 32 tons of copper ''skin'' that made the statue.

For help, Bartholdi turned to Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, ''one of the great geniuses in the history of engineering,'' who a few years later would create the tower that has become synonymous with Paris. Eiffel devised a complex iron ''skeleton'' around a double winding staircase to which each plate of copper was individually attached. The system allows the central pylons to support the weight of the copper. It also means the statue can shift slightly in high winds and adjust to temperature changes.

''Liberty'' also contains interesting details of the dedication ceremonies in New York Harbor in October 1886. A group of suffragists ''positioned their boat directly in front of the viewing stand to point out the supreme irony that a statue dedicated to the idea of liberty was in the form of a woman at a time when women were denied even the basic right to vote.'' For that festive occasion, Liberty's enormous face was covered with a huge tricolor flag. Bartholdi, whose job it was to pull the cord and release the flag, got mixed up and did so in the middle of the speeches.

Conceived as a monument to American independence, Liberty now means more. The words of Emma Lazarus's poem were added to the pedestal in 1903, confirming the statue's link to the millions of immigrants she has greeted to their new home. Curlee repeats the often-cited but always startling fact that ''nearly 40 percent of all Americans living today can trace their ancestry to people who landed at Ellis Island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, Mother of Exiles.''

Curlee's illustrations -- bold, bright full-page acrylic paintings, most dramatically composed -- are helpful in conveying technical details and in portraying the various stages in the creation of the statue. But they are also quite beautiful, for they communicate not just information but also excitement and sentiment. They perfectly complement this masterly look at the story of a great national treasure, and at the vital ideas she represents.